The butts were packaged in bags with the names of the parks where they were collected.
— David Brooks

San Diego  Anybody wanting to know how San Diego’s ban on smoking in public places is doing need only look at the piles of cigarette butts a local group recently picked up in two dozen local parks.

“It’s not working,” said Manuel Andrade of Social Advocates for Youth San Diego, staring at bags containing more than 50,000 butts that his group displayed near a playground at Colina del Sol Park in City Heights.

While a city official says the ban is cutting down on smoking outdoors, Andrade insists more needs to be done to educate the public about the ordinance and to enforce it — particularly at the parks.

SAY San Diego, as the group is better known, and hundreds of volunteers collected 42,757 butts in 2008 and 50,347 last year at 24 parks throughout the city.

Just as he said this, a young man was lighting a cigarette in a corner of the park not far from a city sign that said: “No Smoking, No Littering, Up to $1,000 fine.”

Most cities in San Diego County have passed bans on smoking at parks and beaches since the early 2000s for health and environmental reasons. San Diego’s ban prohibits smoking at parks, beaches and municipal golf courses.

City officials said the ban would be mainly self-enforced, though police also would issue citations. Data was not available last week to show how many tickets have been issued to violators so far.

The Sheriff’s Department provided statistics for a few of the cities it patrols. In Encinitas, deputies issued 18 citations last year and 36 the previous year, crime analyst Jeff Vandersip said. Deputies issued three last year in Del Mar and none in Solana Beach, which was the first California city to ban smoking on its beaches in 2003.

“We did a campaign to educate and for the most part we’ve had nothing but cooperation,” said Wende Protzman, Solana Beach’s deputy city manager.

San Diego Park and Recreation Director Stacey LoMedico said the city has seen a significant reduction in the number of people smoking in parks and beaches.

“Typically when staff (park) rangers, (police department), lifeguards or members of the Park and Rec Department approach an individual smoking, usually it’s just because they haven’t read the sign or didn’t know that there was no smoking,” LoMedico said.

A San Diego police spokesman said enforcement has been stronger in the beach areas because of teams that target underage drinking and littering.

“We don’t have the resources to have a roving littering enforcement unit that is assigned to parks,” Officer Jim Johnson said. “We do it at the beaches because of the inordinate amounts of populations that come.”

Andrade said his group plans to meet with police and park officials to encourage them to ramp up enforcement.

“There is a huge need to place signs by benches, fields and open areas,” he said. “These are the areas where we found more cigarette butts.”